It still looks small, but one can now
see what an important building it really is, and how different from
the mere chapel which it appears to be when seen from a distance.
The sketch which I give is taken from about a mile further on than
the place where the summit is first seen.
Here some men joined us who lived in a hut a few hundred feet from
the top of the mountain and looked after the cattle there during
the summer. It is at their alpe that the last water can be
obtained, so we resolved to stay there and eat the provisions we
had brought with us. For the benefit of travellers, I should say
they will find the water by opening the door of a kind of outhouse;
this covers the water and prevents the cows from dirtying it.
There will be a wooden bowl floating on the top. The water outside
is not drinkable, but that in the outhouse is excellent.
The men were very good to us; they knew me, having seen me pass and
watched me sketching in other years. It had unfortunately now
begun to rain, so we were glad of shelter: they threw faggots on
the fire and soon kindled a blaze; when these died down and it was
seen that the sparks clung to the kettle and smouldered on it, they
said that it would rain much, and they were right. It poured
during the hour we spent in dining, after which it only got a
little better; we thanked them, and went up five or six hundred
feet till the monastery at length loomed out suddenly upon us from
the mist, when we were close to it but not before.
There is a restaurant at the top which is open for a few days
before and after a festa, but generally closed; it was open now, so
we went in to dry ourselves. We found rather a roughish lot
assembled, and imagined the smuggling element to preponderate over
the religious, but nothing could be better than the way in which
they treated us. There was one gentleman, however, who was no
smuggler, but who had lived many years in London and had now
settled down at Rovenna, just below on the lake of Como. He had
taken a room here and furnished it for the sake of the shooting.
He spoke perfect English, and would have none but English things
about him. He had Cockle's antibilious pills, and the last numbers
of the "Illustrated London News" and "Morning Chronicle;" his bath
and bath-towels were English, and there was a box of Huntley &
Palmer's biscuits on his dressing-table.
